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If we ask about your latest TV series, Sensitive Skin, starting Sunday at 8 p.m. on HBO Canada, will you also tell us what it was like to grow up as the daughter of that beloved Canadian TV host, Monty Hall?

“I’d be delighted to do both,” she laughs over the phone from Los Angeles, where the busy Tony Award-winning actress is already shooting another TV show. “Because they each were delightful experiences.”

Sensitive Skin has one of the classiest pedigrees of any recent local TV product, with a cast that boasts Gleason, Kim Cattrall, Don McKellar, Colm Feore, Elliott Gould and Mary Walsh.

McKellar is directing all six episodes and the witty scripts are by Bob Martin, providing his own unique spin on the original British series of the same name, which starred Joanna Lumley in 2005.

“I knew Bob and Don’s work because of The Drowsy Chaperone,” says Gleason, “And so I was thrilled when I heard they wanted me. It’s one of the best things I’ve read recently. I don’t usually get to play supporting characters who have complete lives; they usually just carry the freight of exposition or add a little splash of colour.”

But things are different here. Gleason plays Veronica, the sister of Cattrall’s character Davina, the series’ central figure. In late middle age and unhappy with her life, Davina convinces her husband Al (McKellar) to strike out in a whole new direction, changing friends, homes, styles, everything.

Gleason watches disapprovingly from the sidelines (her home in Lawrence Park) along with her genial husband Roger (Feore). “I loved Colm,” says Gleason. “He has such a lightness of touch. He’s a great chef and he gave me a chef’s knife when we finished shooting.”

But the characters in Sensitive Skin were sharpening different kinds of knives.

“Everybody in this series seems to be having a crisis moment in their lives,” observes Gleason. “Davina and Al are going for a whole different mode of existence, while I don’t have to be jealous or bitter, but I just can’t figure out where happiness lies in my life.”

Fortunately that’s not a problem that Gleason seems to have faced in her own existence.

She was born in 1950 in Toronto to Monty and Marilyn Halparin and her dad was working for the Canadian Wheat Board.

But by the time she was 6, show business had called loud and clear to her father. He changed his last name to Hall and they moved to New York City, where he rapidly tackled a wide assortment of TV and radio shows, even working as an analyst for the New York Rangers on the radio one season.

Still, Gleason doesn’t remember that side of her father at all.

“It was the nature of my folks. They made that decision. Ours was never a show business home. It was never different from anybody else’s house, with curfews and homework and things.”

Yet, from a very early age, Gleason knew with confidence that “I wanted the theatre,” a feeling that was solidified when she was 11 and her parents took her from their home in suburban New Rochelle, N.Y., to Broadway to see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, starring Robert Morse, who recently made yet another career comeback in Mad Men.

“I was just transfixed. We were sitting in the mezzanine. Did I move during the whole show? I don’t think so. We stayed in town in a hotel that night and I think I locked myself in the bathroom and sang the score into the mirror.”

The Halls moved around the New York area a fair bit before making the trek to Los Angeles, where their nomadic pattern continued.

“I once said to my husband Chris (Sarandon) that we’ve been such a band of players our family crest should be a tambourine.”

But Gleason knew what she wanted and, by the time she was 22, she made her professional debut in a San Francisco production of Promises, Promises, followed two years later by playing Ophelia opposite Stacy Keach’s Hamlet in Los Angeles.

The next stop was Broadway, where she starred in the racy musical hit I Love My Wife, followed by more serious theatre like A Day in the Death ofJoe Egg and a job as the female understudy in The Real Thing, “where I substituted in both leading female roles one week.”

The pressures of marriage and family life kept her shuttling back and forth between the coasts, but she finally hit gold when she was cast as the Baker’s Wife in the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s and James Lapine’s Into the Woods.

Her voice moves into a dreamy register as she recalls it. “We tried it out in San Diego. It was rough, but it was good and it became extraordinary. Steve and James honed the show. I remember saying to myself, ‘These geniuses show up every day!’ but that’s the secret, isn’t it? A genius can do it every day.”

It was during the successful run of that show, when Gleason won a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, that she started to think about the kind of roles she found herself in.

“The woman who’s looking outside of herself for something. Watching her own mind at work. Not just one colour, but conflicting colours. Someone who’s highly verbal but may not know where she’s standing from moment to moment.”

It’s the kind of part she’s played a lot. Twice for Woody Allen in his films Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors, as well as in movies as different as Boogie Nights and Heartburn, and TV series like Love & War.

Then, in 1991, she got cast in the kind of role which — had the show succeeded — would have established her as a bona fide musical theatre star. It was called Nick & Nora and it took a song and dance approach to the characters from The Thin Man.

“Well, I can tell you one good thing about the show, I met my husband Chris on it,” Gleason says. And that was the end of the good stuff.

“Arthur Laurents both wrote and directed it and we really missed that additional editorial eye. It was not pleasant. A lot of difficult times. A cast that was second to none, but the book was not right, the staging was not right. It just wasn’t going to happen.”

She sighs, remembering the months of blood and tears that ended after a nine-performance run.

“You know, you have to be in a really, really big colossal flop to get a perspective on what life is. I said to Chris, ‘You know, if we call what’s between the shows we’re doing our down time, then we’re not living a real life.’”

And since then, Gleason lives a real life. Oh, there’s plenty of work, because she’s the kind of actress who’s always in demand, but there’s also time for her husband, her children, her tango lessons and teaching.

Yes, teaching.

“I’ve been teaching for 25 years.” she says proudly. “I want to bring along a generation of actors who feel that we’re actually in service to something. We have the capacity and obligation to shine the light on the material and let the audience be illuminated.

“That’s what it’s supposed to be like and, sometimes, I think we’ve lost our way.”

FIVE FAVE INSPIRATIONS

CHRIS SARANDON

“My husband, the most generous, kind, talented, deeply wise person I have ever known. And his beauty still makes me weak at the knees.”

AARON DAVID GLEASON

“My son is just the most extraordinary soul. He is more teacher to me than he will ever know. Abundant talent, wisdom at an early age, a capacity for communication in many areas of expression.”

MICHAEL STAVOLA

“My tango partner is an inspiration. The whole world of tango of dancing, the social interaction, the grace, the renewed energy I feel have been absolutely life altering. I don’t ever have to go to the gym again!”

THE SONG OF BERNADETTE

“Watch this movie to learn about cinematography, acting, directing and storytelling. Always the black and white movies to learn, always.”

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